I read an interesting, well at least challenging and though provoking, blog by a worship leader I have a lot of respect for (Tim Hughes, we actually do a lot of song he has written) and he posed an idea, would churches today know it if the Holy Spirit wasn’t present during the service?  Wow that is heavy.  Would the service just go on as normal, good music, cool graphics, motivational preaching?  Would anybody really notice? 

Do you personally feel and notice the presence of the Holy Spirit when you worship God?  Do you anticipate meeting with Him when you pray, sing and read the Bible?  A verse that gets tossed around in discussions like this is Matthew 18:22, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”  That verse sets a precedent that we are gathering in “His name”, do we ever come to church just to hang with our friends and chat? 

I believe that the church ceases to meet its purpose if it becomes a social club and we stop expecting to engage the living God.  If we cease to desire to meet with Him in a corporate fashion we are in my opinion wasting all of our time.

Hopefully this Sunday as you prepare to come and worship the living and true God as a big group you come with anticipation of meeting God face to face and come in Jesus’ name and with a desire to honor Him with all of ourselves.

So it’s been a while since we have had an update from the Pastoral Search Team and I wanted to give the faithful readers out there in blog-dom an early scoop as to the progress of the process.

After reviewing several resumes one applicant seems to stand out from the rest and the committee will be moving forward with the interview process in the coming weeks. Due to the strict confidentiality rules set by the team (I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this  ) I can’t say any more but stay tuned and keep praying.

With the beautiful weather we’ve been having lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the river. We are so blessed in the Northwest to have several awesome rivers really close, and when it’s hot I am happy to enjoy them all I can.

Have you ever seen a beautiful river that has slowed and become stagnant? Stagnation happens when water stops moving. At that point the river starts to change, the water usually heats up and all sorts of bacteria starts growing that never could have survived in a swift moving river. The life that was supported by the healthy river has to go elsewhere or die, and new life (parasites, disease carrying mosquitoes…) starts to thrive. Stagnant water is dangerous because of what comes with it. Death.

Now the hard part. I have been observing our church over the last few months and we are becoming stagnant. During this time of transition we seem to have transitioned from a “mission driven” flowing river to a “wait and see” stagnant pool waiting on the next Lead Pastor to swoop in an save the day. This is as much my fault as it is anyone else’s, so I am calling us to action. Let’s start doing the things we know we are suppose to (inviting our friends, sharing our faith, showing up to church…) and not just waiting to see what the new guy will bring. I love you guys and I love this church, and I want God to be proud when he looks at The Church at Kelly Creek because we are doing everything we can to effectively reach Gresham.

The name of the Blog has changed and hopefully with it we can embrace a renewed fire to see Gresham revolutionized for Christ. I looked up the word Revolution and came up with some good definitions (and some that may not totally fit… I’ll leave it to you to sort it out)

1. An overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.

2. A radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.

3. A sudden, complete or marked change in something.

4. A procedure or course, as if in a circuit, back to a starting point.

I haven’t posted on the blog in quite a while, but now that it looks this good how can I resist.

This week is the start of our 52 week celebration of Bring Your Bible to Church Week.  Remember when you are leaving the house to grab that old book and bring it with you.

This week has the makings of being fairly quiet around to old office.  Pastor Joe is off on vacation from today until next Monday(so don’t call him), this is a very important time for him.  The Life Group I am a part of has just recently started going through the book of Hebrews and we have been the last two weeks talking about the sabbath and rest.  Getting away is good for most things.  I recently was without Lisa and Melody for ten loooong days.  I counted down the days anticipating their return and have not wanted to let them out of my sight since they got back.  The same applies to jobs and ministries.  Though not everyone really looks forward to heading back to work after vacation, I know from experience that when you can get away from something you see everyday you are able to see the angles better when you return.  It is a great way to break a rut or just come back ready, rested and fired up to keep moving.

So my asking of you during this week is that you would pray for Pastor Joe and Melissa that they can get away, get rested, relax, and come back ready to help this church continues its purpose of spreading the gospel to all the nations.

I know I am not the first but I will still say, IT WAS AWESOME!  We had a great time celebrating people getting baptized and showing the publicly what God has done and is doing within their own personal lives.

Plus the time of hanging out and getting to know each other better was great too.

If you want to see some pictures they are posted on our church’s main site under 08 River Baptism

Ok, for those of you that took the challenge and made sure to bring your Bibles to church and open them during the service, what did you think?  Was it beneficial?  Did it feel weird? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

I need some reactions. Remember to take it to your Life Groups this week as well.

Personally I really liked it.  I was able to turn to most, if not all, passages and read them straight from the Bible.

Ok here it is, and I need a lot of participation and feedback for this to work. 

Challenge:  Bring your Bible to Sunday service and your Life Group without fail, for the next 4 weeks.  That will finish out June, and then we can come back together and evaluate the process. 

(please comment to let me know you are going to take part so that I know if we have  a big enough test case)

I was sitting in service yesterday listening to the sermon and was noticing how few of the people in attendence were actually reading out of their own personal Bibles.  This kind of struck me.

I started thinking, “well there must be some reason”, and the conclusions I came to were thus:

1. People don’t have one.

2. People aren’t bringing theirs.

1 Answer.  We have a couple at the church, feel free to take one.  Or even better, head over to the local book store and pick one out you like.  There are a ton of different styles, translations, colors, and languages to choose from.  Be creative and pick one that fits your style.  I do recommend getting either NIV, NASB, NKJV, or ESV.  The other translations are fine, but we use these most often in service.  Pick one and roll with it.  Right in it and read it often.

2 Answer. Bring it!  It is pretty simple.  Yeah we put most of the scriptures on the screen, but that is a luxury, and is also so that guests can see it clearly.  There is something important about reading the Bible from your own personal Bible and getting acquainted with it.  Also, bring it to your LifeGroup.